Catan - The Computer Game

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Editors' Review

In this engrossing adaptation of the board game Settlers of Catan, players attempt to dominate a mythical island by trading resources and building settlements, cities, and roads. Don't be fooled by Catan's small size and underwhelming graphics: this is one highly addictive game. It's also easy to learn, with a 22-step animated tutorial to explain the rules. You can play against your friends or up to three computer opponents with configurable personalities (aggressive, friendly, or neutral) and levels of expertise. The only major flaw, if you can call it that, is the 60-minute trial period may not be long enough for a full evaluation. But it's long enough to get hooked, as we can attest. Strategy gamers, consider yourself warned.

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Publisher's Description

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From Oberon Media:
As a pioneer on the island of Catan, your goal is to grow your settlement by producing and trading resources like grain, ore, and wood. Expand your settlements with roads and cities and be the first player to earn 10 victory points and win the game. Random maps are created each time you play so each game provides a new and exciting challenge.

I did get the demo in a total of a 30MB download that also auto-installed some **** programs and toolbars I never authorized: yontoo, delpry(?), and some german program that immedietly started running like Anti-Virus and asking for my personal info, saying it would do some online back-up...bogus crap!

When you purchase this game you will be at GREAT RISK to be put on some sort of monthly billing cycle by its publisher, Oberon Games. It is nearly impossible to cancel these billings and they just keep charging over and over and over again.

Summary

Unless you like disputing a charge every month or paying a huge amount of money for this game STAY AWAY!

Like many others I had the issue regarding saving the game. However, supplier support was very good and provided me with the workaround as set out by other reviewers.

The game automatically shows the 'probabilities' for each location where a settlement can be placed. The menu provides an option to remove the display of these (which would require further brain-power which is sometimes preferable). Unfortunately, like the save option the remove probabilities option does not appear to work. This is pretty frustrating as the board game does not have the probabilities displayed and I would prefer to match that as accurately as possible. Customer support has not responded to questions regarding problems with this feature.

simple and clean. As to the complaints about the 60 minute trial period, unless this differs from other MSN download games with trial periods, you can play a single session (with multiple games) within the trial period. However, once you exit after 60 minutes or more of play, the trial period expires.

(You'll probably have to create the "MSN Games" folder and then inside that, the Catan folder. Modify the above path if you use something other than C: for your Documents and Settings folder. Then save works fine.

To speed the game up, go to the preferences, and drag the game speed slider to the right. I haven't tested yet what this does to the quality of the computer opponents' game play.

Finally, regarding rules: There is a little 22 slide Tutorial (not exactly rules) in the Catan folder (C:\Program Files\Oberon\Catan on most systems).

Cons

Computer opponents miss some key intelligence. They seem unable to reason about winning via the road length card, and are not very clueful about buying development cards. As the human, you can almost always win the largest army points.

Nice game. Could have been packaged better so save works without tweaks, and the help should be available from the

Even though I knew nothing about Catan besides hearing it was a good game, this game made it easy to learn despite not having any rules or how-to-play guide in the program itself. Now I am addicted. I highly recommend it for beginners. Others have mentioned it takes a long time for the computer to decide on what it would like to trade, but I find this gives me enough time to plan my trade strategy based on what the computer offers.

I have received timely email support from Microsoft and Carbonated Games helping me with the Save Game error. They told me all I had to do was create the save game folder the game failed to do during install, and it works perfectly. So yes, YOU CAN SAVE.

Cons

My only gripe is that there is no Rules or How-to-play guide included in the software itself (e.g. in the menu) I figured it all out within playing three games though, and now I'm addicted.

Generally it is gameplay speed which makes this adaptation so very irritating. You spend all your time waiting.

The 60 minute trial is barely long enough for a full game. Online, Catan can be played with computer opponents in much less than ten minutes. This is slower than some of the slowest human opponents I have met online.

The game is great other that not being able to save it. It's just like the board game. However, I was disappointed to see only a single player game against computer opponents is offered.

Cons

* * * B U Y E R - B E W A R E ! ! * * * The publisher to this game is Oberon Media. However, they will not support the game when it is purchased from this website (Download.com). So, they will not fix the save problem with the game for you. Nor will anyone else contacted via E-mail from C-Net or Protexis Support give you your money back. BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK!..YOU HAVE BEEN WARENED...

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Thank You, !

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